A place for a tired old woman to try to figure things out so that the world makes a bit of sense.

Sunday, August 20, 2006

Credibility Gap

I'm certain that the current regime really doesn't care much about how the rest of the world views the US and its policies. I'm even more certain that the current regime especially doesn't care about how small countries in the Middle East without vast oil reserves view the US and its policies. And that I find that disturbing because I don't think it's simply a case of "they hate us for our freedoms." It's more like they loathe us because we might very well bomb their country back into the stone age.

A little more than five years ago, almost all of the nations of the world mourned with us after the terrorist attack of September 11. All of that good will has been lost, and deservedly so. The US no longer enjoys the trust and the credibility it once held. An editorial in Tunisia's Tunis Hebdo gives ample evidence of that in responding to the news of the British bust of a terrorist plot.

But beyond the emotions provoked by the event, relayed continuously and in a way that didn't fail to resuscitate the obsession with terrorism and the destruction that goes with it, and along with all the unbearable images that one could not possibly support, there are nonetheless questions that with all necessary care, common mortals must not fail to ask.

At the very moment that Lebanon and Palestine were being subject to Zionist barbarity with the blessing of the indecent Bush-Blair tandem, we are told (could this be a coincidence?) that this "big catch" was made possible thanks to amazing detective work and an investigation that reaches back six months. All of which didn't fail to cause doubt and skepticism among a majority of British Muslims who see only a subtle attempt, yet another set-up, designed to distract global opinion from the methodical genocide taking place in the Middle East.

Even the reputable British press began to point out the lack of transparency, in a case where the proofs looks far too skimpy.

...After all, how can one grant the benefit of the doubt a "couple" who have had the macabre ingeniousness to give birth to a plot of unprecedented scale, plunging Iraq into the abyss of despair and decline ... and this under the very nose of the U.N., which too has been drained of all credibility? …

How can one explain that at a time when Great Britain maintains its highest-possible terrorist alert, followed by a number of other capital cities, the White-House chief and the boss of 10 Downing Street have not even considered, as would normally occur, shortening their vacations? The last of the two, imperturbable, enjoying his time under the Caribbean sun in Barbados … an indecent bit of leisure that apparently drove 150 members of parliament to sign a petition demanding an end to the parliamentary summer break and a meeting to discuss the Blair government's position on the Israeli-Lebanese conflict.

Let's suppose that the aborted plot was actually the handiwork of "Islamo Facists," according to the "measured" expression by President Bush, why then be astonished, after having sown the seeds of hatred among Arabic-Muslim youth, that one collects a harvest of human bombs prepared to give their lives as an offering to make up for the affronts that they are subjected to by Bush. He who, king of contradiction and incoherence, after having supplied the Hebrew State with precision bombs and fuel to destroy the Land of the Cedar, pretends to be shocked by the scale of the damage. And he even had the nerve to send Condi to shed a few crocodile tears in Beirut [yet] while in Israel, the U.S. Secretary of State stood like a piece of marble, when Olmert stated his intention to continue his fatal offensive.

Instead of calming emotions, the U.S. President and Blair's blind "follow-my-leader" attitude, are in fact building factories for terrorist and other jihadists. To regild their tarnished reputations, some politicians who, by virtue of long experience with semantic distortions, would not hesitate, to paraphrase Khrushchev, to ask the advice of a good gastroenterologist, to find out what else can be done to push even more down the throats of their citizens. And the metaphor is worth its weight in gold.